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Morocco’s state-run power firm, Office National de l’Electricite (ONE), invited companies and consortia to submit expressions of interest in five wind farm projects with a total power generation capacity of 850 megawatts, Le Matin reported. The deadline for letters of interest was set for March 2, 2012. Upon passing the preliminary phase, companies would be invited to bid in an international tender to be launched in Q2 2012. The tender is for the development, design, financing, construction, operation and maintenance of five wind farms structured under a Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) scheme. The tender also includes the separate procurement and maintenance of a 200 megawatt wind farm.
The projects will be realised under a public-private partnership with ONE, the Energy Investments Company and King Hassan Fund, all owned by the state. Morocco aims to increase power generation from wind farms to 2,000 megawatts by 2020 from current 280 megawatts at a total cost of USD 3.6bn. The energy-importing country strives to develop its renewable energy sector to provide for its domestic demand, which grows at 6% per year, as well as export the remaining energy to Europe via Spain where it has a power market trading licence for selling electricity. Morocco has recently launched big renewable energy development plans involving solar and wind power. The solar power plan envisages building five power stations worth USD 9 bn to account for 38% of the country’s installed power generation capacity by 2020. Together, the wind and solar energy development schemes should reduce Morocco’s annual imports of fossil fuels by 2.5mn tons of oil equivalent and prevent emissions of 9mn tons of carbon dioxide.
Copyright 2012 Written by IntelliNews, Internet Securities, Inc – MENA Today.
A Euromoney Institutional Investor Company.
